


lion's den

by painting



Series: Umbrella Academy [14]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Allergies, Sibling Bonding, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-10 08:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19902751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/painting/pseuds/painting
Summary: Vanya has a girlfriend, and Klaus has a problem.





	1. jasmine

**Author's Note:**

> just got allergies on the mind lately i GUESS

"Vanya, you dog!"

It's always easy to tell when Klaus has just woken up, because his voice is faintly hoarse and he mumbles a lot. He's never slept well, even as a child, so it takes on that quality often and at unpredictable hours. Now, however, at nine in the morning, it's obvious from the clarity and ease in his tone that he's been up since before sunrise.

"That's up by the river; _how_ did you manage to make it all the way up there? Long night, little sister?"

Self-consciously, Vanya fidgets with the tight coils connected to the phone and stares at the ground.

"Shut up," she says into the receiver. She's already had breakfast and gotten dressed, but her own eyelids still feel weighted down by the heavy itch of fatigue. "Just come and meet me here, okay? It's closer to the market, anyway. I'll meet you in the lobby in half an hour. Do you need the address again?"

Klaus says no and is mostly convincing about it. He cheers for her delicately before he closes the line.

Spending so much time roaming the city as a vagabond had no doubt provided him with the experience to navigate its public transportation system expertly, tricks and all, which is probably why he's able to arrive so early and take Vanya by surprise.

Jasmine opens the door when he knocks, of course, because it's her apartment, but Vanya's nerves keep her eyes fixed on the entryway. Her brother's voice is unmistakable, boyish and friendly, as he greets Vanya's host.

"Hello, I'm looking for my… Oh. Well, aren't you handsome!"

"Klaus!" Vanya says. "I told you to wait for me downstairs."

"Thanks, baby." Jasmine smiles at Klaus. "I'm Jasmine."

"It's a _pleasure._ " Klaus leans on the doorway and pushes himself off against the frame and into Jasmine's home. His eyes flicker around the room curiously.

"Just let me get my stuff and then we can go, okay?"

Vanya doesn't care that she's rushing him. She and Jasmine haven't even had a talk about making things official yet, or whatever, which means Vanya definitely isn't ready to introduce her to a member of the family-- especially a family like hers.

"No hurry," Klaus says mildly.

Without wasting time, Vanya returns to the bedroom and starts to gather her wallet and keys. Before she slings the thick strap of her messenger bag over her shoulder, Vanya uses Jasmine's deodorant because she didn't bring her own and Jasmine had worn Vanya's earlier in the week. It's probably fine. 

She knows Klaus is smart, despite the impression he tries giving off when he's in public, and he's definitely had enough romantic encounters in his personal life to know what's going on. He and Vanya weren't close growing up and they've only been spending time together for the past few months, but he certainly knows her well enough to understand that Vanya doesn't have the kind of friends whose bedrooms she sleeps in. All she can hope for now is his grace in acknowledging what he's just walked in on.

By the time Vanya steps back out, Klaus has gotten quiet. She's worried about what that might mean, whether Jasmine had left Klaus and his sticky fingers alone in the room or if he was having one of those telekinetic freak outs and had to step outside, but instead, he gives her something else to fret over.

"She's great," he's telling Jasmine conversationally as the both of them stare down at the cat slamming the side of its body against his bare legs. "Is she new or old?"

Jasmine smiles proudly and says, "She's new. About a year now."

Klaus crouches down and says, "Wow."

He strokes down her back and scratches at the base of her ears, his featherweight touch characteristically gentle as the cat leans into it. He chuckles in fond surprise when she briefly hops up on her hind legs and presses her side into him with an abundance of strength.

Mindful of the risk of appearing controlling or matronly, Vanya bites her tongue against the idea of reminding Klaus of how that might be a bad idea. He's going to start sneezing in a couple of minutes, almost definitely, but she reminds herself that it isn't her problem. Klaus is an adult and he can make his own decisions.

Besides, it looks like Ben is taking care of it for her, if Klaus briefly narrowing his eyes at the empty couch means what Vanya thinks it does.

"Are you ready?" she asks anyway, for both their sakes. The sooner she can get him out of here, the better-- for a multitude of reasons.

"Yep!" Klaus springs back up and sniffles as he straightens himself out, brushing some stray hairs off of the top of his forearm. He invites Jasmine to come to the Vietnamese market on Argyle, and hugs her goodbye after she breaks the unfortunate news that she's going to be busy all weekend with work.

It's awkward for Vanya as she follows in her brother's footsteps, because neither she nor Jasmine seems to know exactly how to say goodbye in his company. They both hesitate for a moment with their touch like strings held taut, made up of nervous smiles and too-firm holds on one another. Jasmine ends the hug with a chaste kiss on Vanya's cheek that could be mistaken for Euro-friendly, after which Vanya realizes she can't resist and Klaus isn't the worst of her siblings to find out about Jasmine early, so she tilts Jasmine's chin and kisses her on the mouth for real. 

Klaus doesn't react at all, unsurprisingly behaving like the two of them have been an established couple forever as he waits patiently and scratches his arm. Vanya notices him scrunching his nose a few times as he waves goodbye.

At least he isn't Diego or Luther, Vanya thinks during the twenty minute stroll to their destination while she listens to Klaus tell the story of his old six-day boyfriend who used to live in the building next door. Although Five might be Vanya's number one choice when it comes to introducing new partners, because he's respectful, appropriate, and doesn't gossip, Klaus is maybe a close second.

He's only a little congested and getting better the longer he's out in the fresh air, which isn't really so bad. He barely seems to notice it, even when he gets stuck coughing for a few seconds as they wait at a crosswalk. Listening to his residual allergy symptoms is a very low-level sacrifice for Vanya to endure, all things considered.

Diego's protectiveness, on the other hand, would have either freaked Jasmine out or exasperated Vanya for weeks -- or maybe both -- and Luther's cluelessness might have gotten Vanya stuck in an awkward coming out conversation, or at least made him uncomfortable as he decided whether he _should_ go the Diego route and try to protect Vanya from her own potential partner, or try to figure out how to be supportive without stammering his way through his how-do-you-do's.

She is planning on talking to Allison about it, but Allison is nosy and, unlike Klaus, can't be distracted into a dozen other conversations while on a mission to extract and collect information about Vanya's personal life. Vanya loves her sister, but she'd rather wait until it's a sure thing.

That isn't to say that she's not off the hook with Klaus, because he keeps finding ways to bring the topic romance back into the forefront.

Briefly, she entertains him, on and off between his chats with the vendors. For all of his grandiosity, Klaus is modest when it comes to any of his actual talents. He's always picked up languages easily, which Vanya noticed during their lessons as children, and when they'd first visited the market together months ago, he told Vanya he knew "some Vietnamese" from his time spent in the sixties. He then proceeded to engage in dialogue while sounding indistinguishable from a native speaker, light and comfortable without any issues stumbling over the pronunciation.

Even after coming around with him a few times, Vanya is still impressed by the way Klaus is so easily able to switch between that and English, especially while dealing with his body's reactive protests to him spending a couple of minutes near Jasmine's cat. Aside from the occasional couple of sneezes and intermittent rubbing of his eyes, Klaus is mostly back to normal, if not somewhat distracted-- but that's within his realm of normal, anyway.

"Could you not tell the others about Jasmine?" Vanya requests of him after he says goodbye to a sweet older woman who had been generous enough to send them off with a couple of extra cakes. Klaus gets free stuff here all the time. "I just don't want to get ahead of myself. We're not really girlfriends or anything yet."

"You're not?" Klaus sips iced green tea through a straw and tilts the cup so he can get to the last of it. "Uh, how long have you known each other?"

"A month," Vanya says.

"A _month?_ Stop," Klaus says. He tosses the empty cup at a garbage can and doesn't quite make it, so he scurries over to pick it up and dispose of it properly. When he returns, he says, "What's the hold up? My god, a month, Vanya, _ay caramba,_ and here I was, the fool, thinking she was The One."

"I like her," Vanya says, trying her damndest to keep the stars out of her eyes. "And she's the first person I've felt this seriously about since…" 

"Since Harold the Dastardly," Klaus says. "The World Ender. Who was a total fluke, by the way."

"Yeah, I know." Vanya says. They've already talked about this. "I just don't want to rush anything, that's all."

Klaus hums, and Vanya guesses that he doesn't really get it, but he stays true to the Secret of Jasmine under the terms of Vanya's promise to let him see her again soon.


	2. lavender

Perhaps it's fair that Vanya has forbidden Klaus from visiting her girlfriend's house, but nobody said he ever had to like _fair._

"It's for your own good," Ben says to him after an unsuccessful begging session over the phone. "You guys can just hang out at Vanya's again like you always do."

"I'm interested in seeing someplace new," Klaus tells him woefully, pouring himself over the couch like a beautifully distressed damsel. He basically is one. Always has been, due mostly to the decisions of others as opposed to his own. "I miss exploring strangers' houses. I'm not going to steal anything."

"I don't think she's worried about that."

Ben turns a page in his book. Klaus whines so he'll stop ignoring him.

"If you spend a few hours in an apartment with Strawberry you'll end up having an allergy attack for the rest of the day," Ben adds, annoyingly neutral.

"In an apartment with _who?_ "

"Strawberry," Ben repeats. "The cat. That's her name. Have you even been paying attention?"

"Her name is _Strawberry?_ " This is so unfair. Monumentally unfair. "That's so _precious,_ Ben, are you kidding me? Who even named her that?" Ben doesn't say anything. "You're totally heartless. I've got to get reacquainted. I'll _barely_ even touch her, you'll see."

"That's not true, and you know it," Ben says. "How's it going to look when you come home and you're still sneezing? People are going to notice and then everyone's going to know about Jasmine. You won't be able to make up an excuse; you're a terrible liar."

Klaus takes righteous offense to that. "What are you talking about?" he asks. "I'm an excellent liar."

"You're a con man," Ben corrects, "but your lies suck. You always overdo it."

"Oh, what do you know."

Klaus deflates and decides to give up for now. It's a lost battle, but there's a possibility that he'll win the war if he's annoying enough. Persistence is a pain in the ass, but Klaus has been bored lately and teasing Vanya at least gives him something to do. He's getting tired of waiting around for something new to happen.

A week and a half later, he gets his wish.

Vanya calls the house at noon and Klaus picks up on the second ring, partly because it's an exciting game of roulette to see who's calling but mostly because this phone is so loud and he hates hearing its evil siren song reverberating throughout the first floor of the house. No one else seems to mind it like he does, and that doesn't feel great.

"Klaus! Okay. Good." Klaus feels vindicated, in a weird way, at the realization that someone is happy to find his company. "I need to ask you for a favor."

"Oh, _Vanya._ You know I could never say no to you."

"You don't even know what it is yet."

"You could say that's a testament to my brotherly loyalty. Or maybe it's rainbow solidarity, I haven't decided yet."

Vanya sighs and says, "Okay. I'm at rehearsal and I left some of my sheet music at Jasmine's--"

"Nice," Klaus says.

"--and I-- yeah-- And I'm too far away to get there and back in time, so I was wondering if you could bring it to me. She's home, she can buzz you up."

"Vanya, I would be _honored,_ " Klaus says. "Me oh my, I can't believe it. You're finally unlocking the verboten gate!"

"I would ask Allison, since she's the only other one who knows about Jasmine," Vanya says, refusing to condone his theatrics, "but she's in L.A. right now… so…"

"Say no more." Klaus tries to remember where he put his shoes. "I'll be over there in, like, half an hour?"

"Thanks, Klaus. And don't hang out there for too--"

He hangs up.

The bus ride to Jasmine's corner of the city is wonderfully scenic and takes Klaus through a slideshow of cultural neighborhoods and peeks of residential streets lined with trees. Transit gets crowded about halfway through, usually by people wanting to see the stolen artifacts at the museum or illegally toss pennies into the fountain at the park. When he was staying in the area, Klaus used to love giving tourists directions because they'd sometimes tip him for his enthusiasm. Maybe he should start that up again.

Jasmine lives in a well-maintained older building with a short, green courtyard in the front, the kind with a very-ignored sign asking its residents to keep off the grass. Klaus usually tries to stay away from these places because the more history a site has, the more spirits will be attached to it, but there's something nice about this place, almost like a positive presence, if he believed in things like that, and Klaus didn't see anyone in the hallway when he first paid her a visit. Hopefully the good karma of his errand will award him the same fate.

It doesn't, but at least the ghost hanging out in the foyer didn't die a gruesome death. Klaus prefers those, obviously, because they're so much more comfortable to look at, but it's kind of unfortunate because they're indistinguishable from real people until they do something like waft through the door to the staircase, and sometimes an _actual_ living person catches him in a conversation with what looks like an imaginary friend at best and a psychotic delusion at worst.

She follows Klaus up to the third floor, but not down the hall to Jasmine's front door, which has him counting his blessings. Klaus is like a broken ouija board and the last thing Jasmine needs is a haunted living room.

"Hello, beautiful," he says to Vanya's girlfriend when she opens the door. Jasmine hugs him back, and he swivels her around before he lets go, placing himself on the inner side of the doorway and feeling sticky linoleum as he slips off his shoes. "Lovely living space. I didn't really get a chance to see it before."

He really is able to tell that a cat lives here almost instantly, which is almost like having another superpower. It's so much better to have an invisible sense for something living; a nice change of pace, so to speak, despite its auxiliary side effects.

"Thank you!" Jasmine's so sweet. "Vanya's sheet music is on the kitchen table. You're really nice to do this for her."

Klaus shrugs and says, "I know. She owes me." Jasmine responds with that half-laugh-half-sigh that people usually use to respond to jokes.

He's going through his sister's things when Strawberry jumps onto the table like a friendly little angel. She's purring loudly enough for Klaus to hear her even a couple of feet away.

He gasps softly and says, "Yes! Hello," and holds out his hand.

"Don't do it," Ben says, but it doesn't sound like he really cares whether Klaus chooses to touch her or not. He'd tried to get Klaus to take an antihistamine before coming over, but Klaus had argued that someone would probably ask him why he needed it and he didn't have a good enough excuse. It doesn't matter what Ben wants, though, and Klaus grins when he passes the test and Strawberry drags her cheek along the outer side of his knuckles. He cups the top of her head and strokes along the back of her neck.

"She's so sweet," he says to Jasmine. Strawberry lets him scratch the spot underneath her chin.

"She loves new people," Jasmine says. 

Klaus does, too, which is why he sticks around against his siblings' wishes and gets ready to resume his role of valiant delivery boy once the itch in his face becomes too heightened to ignore.

It usually takes about fifteen minutes for his allergic reactions to reach their peak, after which they usually stay at the same intensity until he's far enough away from the trigger to get some relief. It doesn't often get worse than that, at least as far as Klaus remembers. This isn't his first time hanging out in a cat owner's dwellings and it's never become an emergency or anything.

Still, his tolerance for the relentless allergic discomfort does decrease over time, which is almost the same thing.

Strawberry gets bored of him soon enough, and then Klaus accepts Jasmine's offer to feed him a mason jar filled with lavender lemonade, which is unexpectedly charming in that it tastes kind of like soap. He asks her if it's homemade and she tells him about the community garden down the street.

He can't stop himself from sneezing -- he's never been very good at that -- so he doesn't bother trying. Klaus is purposefully polite about it, but Jasmine still says something after he's done it several times during their conversation.

"Are you getting sick?" she asks, sounding more concerned than worried about germs.

Klaus reassures her anyway and says, "No, nothing like that. The cat's just starting to get to me."

"Oh no, baby, are you allergic?" Jasmine is one of those people who calls _everybody_ "baby", but no one has called Klaus that since Dave, and it's a weird sort of comfort to have that again even if it isn't reserved especially for him.

"Yeah," Klaus says. "It's fine. But maybe I should split soon."

"No kidding!" Jasmine stands up. "You should have said something. Can I get you a couple tissues?"

"Please. That would be fantastic."

"I should have offered them sooner." She grabs a box from on top of a squat bookshelf against the wall and brings it over. "I'm sure Vanya's expecting you by now, anyway."

Klaus chuckles and says, "Yeah, maybe."

Once he's got a handful of Kleenex, Klaus stares at the sun through Jasmine's window to indulge himself in a sneeze that would have come some time over the next several minutes anyway. May as well hurry it along while he has the resources. A second one tags along a short moment later, following a desperate, stuttered gasp.

"Oh, no. Bless you!" Jasmine says. She better not be cloaking on the guilt just as Klaus is about to leave.

"Thank you." Klaus blows his nose and then lifts a few more tissues from the box and leaves it there on the couch, blocking himself from the temptation to pet Strawberry goodbye.

Jasmine seems to read his mind. "You should wash your hands before you go," she says. "Sorry I don't have any medicine or anything that I can give you."

"I'll survive," Klaus promises, and his rinsing himself off in the sink turns out to be a good enough remedy for that to hold true. He's getting better and better at surviving without medicine these days.

Even so, it's not enough for him to get away with having spent too much time in the apartment overall, and Vanya isn't happy with him by the time he arrives at her concert hall with pink-rimmed eyes and a runny nose. The bus ride had only done so much to clear his head, and he'd spent part of it plucking silky, long strands of cat fur off of his clothes. Maybe that hadn't worked in his favor.

He knows she can tell what he's been up to before he even speaks, and she's frowning uneasily when she takes the folder of sheet music from his lily-soap-scented hands.

"Klaus, I told you not to stay too long," she chides. "Are you okay?"

"Oh my God, you don't have to look so scared," Klaus says, and he can't help sniffling after. Jasmine's parting gift had only lasted him half the trip over here. "I'm fine, Vanya, it'll wear off in a few hours. Your girlfriend is very nice, you know, and she's quite a looker."

The mention of Jasmine starts to lift her spirit just enough. Vanya rolls her eyes and smiles, then swats at him with the folder.

"I know," she says. "Oh, yeah, I wanted to ask you-- do you want to have dinner with us next Thursday? She was going to cook, but we can do it at my place."

"You sure?"

"Absolutely." Vanya turns around, but looks back at Klaus over her shoulder. "Allison's going to be back in town. I'll see if she wants to come, too."


End file.
